


Quick Bright Things

by Chiomi



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/F, Full Shift Werewolves, Gen, Sharing Clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 07:27:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5120054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiomi/pseuds/Chiomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or: five times Lydia cuddles with Cora in wolf form plus one time they cuddle while human-shaped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quick Bright Things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hazelNuts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hazelNuts/gifts).



The first time it happens, Lydia thinks she’s dealing with Derek until the wolf gets close, and then she’s seized by utter terror until - Cora? Almost definitely Cora - licks her hand. It’s still nervewracking, though, since the last time she’d seen Cora they’d been sniping at each other as Cora packed up to leave Beacon Hills theoretically forever.

Cora leaps up on the end of her chaise and curls up there, putting her head on Lydia’s knee. Lydia raises an eyebrow at her, but Cora just closes her eyes. “Okay, then.”

She goes back to reading on her Kindle, because these articles won’t keep up with themselves. Prada, fierce and useful as always, trots over from where he’d been lounging with his head hanging over the pool and sniffs at Cora, then jumps up and curls against Cora’s back. Lydia reads until the need to pee moves her an hour and a half later. Cora looks like she’s been betrayed when Lydia jostles her head, and then leaps off the chaise and back out into the woods.

Okay then.

-

Lydia’s only a little late to the meeting at Derek’s loft, but Cora - human-shaped now - still scowls at her. Lydia rolls her eyes in response. “So, Scott tells me we have pixies. What’s the plan?”

Derek scowls at her, too, but his scowl is just kind of annoying as opposed to feeling like a personal challenge. “Our parents had some kind of treaty with them. If we can find the documents, we might be able to get a treaty again.”

“Or we could kill them,” Cora says.

“Yes,” Lydia says witheringly, “mass murder _would_ be your solution. You realize we don’t actually want to live in a perpetual war zone, right?”

Cora shrugs, arms still crossed. “And yet no one’s taken a bulldozer to the nemeton. You’re not really trying that hard.”

“Could you two stop?” Derek snaps it out, then looks tired and contrite. Lydia frowns at him, because Hale family angst is tiresome, and he could do something useful if he really wanted them to stop.

Cora’s shoulders tighten further.

“Soooo,” says Stiles. “How about we don’t do anything until tomorrow when the moon’s gonna be a _little_  more comfortably far from full. Derek and I can go to the bank to check the family safe deposit boxes, the ladies can strategically eavesdrop on the pixies if you guys can find them - they seem to be less likely to inflict violence on women, but a Hale relative in each group anyway just in case, and Scott, you can investigate the house. You’ve spent the most time there of anyone not deeply traumatized by it, and I doubt anything’s there, but we should check anyway.”

Lydia assesses Stiles. He looks just slightly fed up, but usually he’d pair off with his best friend, right? Or at least put his best friend with the girl he’s trying to get back together with. He meets her gaze, and in response to her raised eyebrow he just quirks a corner of his mouth. Okay. She narrows her eyes at him. He should know by now that he needs to let her in on his plans, even if they’re just social. “Fine,” she says.

“You can’t unilaterally decide what we’re doing,” Cora snaps.

“Cora,” Derek snaps back, and Lydia turns to leave while the tension simmers between them.

She’s got homework to do and another book to read about nemetons. A bulldozer might wreak more damage - might release more demons like the nogitsune that were trapped safely under its roots - but she doesn’t want it around. It’s like a toothache in the back of her mind, magic pulling her like gravity. But it needs to be perfect, and she needs to do it herself, because no one else can be trusted the whole way with the nemeton at stake.

She drives home, and the light’s on in the front room. It loosens something in her. Her mom’s never been under direct threat, has only ever been peripheral to an assassination attempt and therefore not a target. But still, logical awareness of her mother as unlikely collateral damage doesn’t really ease Lydia’s worry the way seeing her safe at home does. “Hey, mom!”

“Lydia! I’ve got pad thai.”

Lydia hangs her book-filled bag on the newel post on the way past: she doesn’t need to bring that in to dinner. They eat on the couch, Lydia’s toes tucked between the couch cushions and her mom’s grading spread out on the coffee table. It’s nice. They don’t get to do this much anymore.

When she gets upstairs, there’s a wolf on her bed, and Lydia has to repress a scream as she startles back out the door.

Cora lifts her head, though, and manages to look sad even with canine features. She’s curled around Prada, like they’ve been cuddling, and Lydia approaches slowly. “Had a fight with Derek?”

Cora closes her eyes and tucks her nose back in against Prada, which is basically an admission. Lydia smiles to herself, now that she knows the score, and climbs on to the bed next to Cora to start her reading. She rests her knee against Cora’s back, and it’s all surprisingly peaceful until Prada needs to go out.

When Lydia gets back upstairs, Cora is gone.

-

Cora’s not in any of Lydia’s classes, so Lydia just meets her in the parking lot after school. They haven’t texted to confirm it - Cora seemingly doesn’t text at all - but Cora’s still waiting at Lydia’s car when she gets there.

“Really?” Cora is staring at Lydia’s shoes in a completely judgemental way.

Lydia’s hackles go up, and she makes a show of looking down at her pumps. “Aren’t they cute?”

“Not for _going out in the woods hunting pixies_ ,” Cora hisses.

“Really? I can’t imagine why not,” Lydia says, in the vapid tone she still keeps in her arsenal even though it’s rusty with disuse. “Relax. I’ve got hiking boots in the car. Despite what you apparently think, I’m not a complete moron.”

Cora opens her mouth like she wants to say something, then just gets in the car.

Lydia drives them out to the Preserve, a place she’s spent far too much time in the past couple years. The drive is silent, the silence more oppressive than it is when Cora’s furry. Lydia’s not going to ask why Cora’s come to her. She knows some of it, she thinks, and knows at least that the reasons are most likely feelings and not something that will result in something terrible happening to her. Cora’s overwhelmingly more likely to protect her than hurt her, even as abrasive as she is, so Lydia doesn’t need to admit to ignorance and ask for explanations. She parks at the head of the jogging trail and grabs her boots from the back. She’s tangentially aware of Cora moving around, but is still surprised when she looks up and Cora’s most of the way to naked. “What are you doing?”

Cora looks over at her and quirks an eyebrow. “You think I’m sniffing out clues with my weaker nose?”

Cora sheds her pants and throws them into Lydia’s backseat, and then with a ripple of skin and muscle and an unsettling rearrangement she’s wolf-shaped. She trots over to Lydia and shoves her wet nose into Lydia’s hand. Lydia slides a hand up the side of her face and around the back of her ear, but doesn’t scritch, because that feels just a shade too far. Cora nudges her nose against the inside of Lydia’s arm, then breaks away to trot towards the woods. Lydia gets up, and follows.

-

The fact that there weren’t any pixies or evidence thereof in the woods was apparently because they’d been busy _making the entire high school lose their mind_. They’re now apparently in the final stages of preparation for a musical version of _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_. Lydia has no words for how appalled she is, how done she is with everything. She spots Scott helping someone move a setpiece, looking bemused but affable. So supernatural creatures are apparently exempt from this particular madness rather than more susceptible.

“If we shadows have offended,” comes Stiles voice from behind her, and Lydia starts violently.

She turns to look at him, and he’s - oh, no, he’s holding a script. “No, Stiles.”

He scrunches his face up at her, and his eyes are fever-bright. “Just because you didn’t want to be involved in the play, Lydia -”

“Because yesterday _there was no play_ ,” Lydia snaps.

Stiles looks confused, but shakes it off, rolls his eyes. “It hasn’t come together that fast.”

“Go - run lines or something,” Lydia says, and goes to look for someone sensible.

She finds Cora leaning against her locker, and slides in beside her to send judgmental looks at a girl from her Calculus class who is now obsessively safety-pinning what looks like a Titania costume on some freshman.

“I’m pretty sure I saw this in a telenovela,” Cora says flatly.

“I’d ask which part, but I don’t want to know.” Standing in judgement together suits them: Lydia’s never felt so comfortable with Cora in her human form before.

The bell rings, and people slowly trickle away to class. Cora and Lydia don’t move.

Cora sighs. “I can smell them, but it’s everywhere. Cover me while I shift in the bathroom?”

“Yeah,” Lydia says, and follows her again. The girls’ room is empty, but Lydia still leans against the sinks with an eye on the door while Cora strips in one of the stalls, door not quite closed.

Lydia only realizes she’s been staring when Cora starts to shift and the smooth line of her back goes strange. A moment later, Cora trots out with a bundle of clothes in her mouth that she passes to Lydia. Cora rubs against her, more cat than wolf, and then they go out hunting.

-

They wander for the entirety of first period, and Cora just gets crankier. When their latest winding path takes them to an art room that reeks of paint even to Lydia and reveals only props rather than pixies, Cora very determinedly rips apart the painted dog. The bell rings while Cora’s rendering it down to sawdust, and she starts growling. Lydia pets her head, strokes all the way down her back when Cora doesn’t bite her hand off. She seems to calm down under Lydia’s touch, which is - she doesn’t, in her other shape.

The reasons aren’t important now. What’s important is tracking down the pixies before they can wreak more Shakespeare-themed havoc. Lydia’s phone goes off, and it’s Scott. He sounds breathless when she answers.

“Stiles got up out of Psych and started walking towards the woods, and I can’t get him to stop.”

Lydia’s fingers twist in Cora’s fur. She’s familiar with being pulled out of your mind and into those woods. “It’s them?”

“Can’t be anything else.”

“We’ll be right there,” she says, and hangs up. “We need to go. I have clothes in my car.”

Cora nods, a strange gesture from a wolf, and they cut straight out to the parking lot. Lydia opens her back door to let Cora hop in, because that’s where her leggings and sweaters end up when she’s out on days with a lot of temperature variance. She drives out of the school parking lot and towards the Preserve: they’ll end up ahead of Stiles, hopefully. She doesn’t know the route he’ll take, but she feels it, and wishes she’d been able to feel the damn pixies before they latched onto her friend.

“Phone,” Cora demands, leaning forward between the seats.

“Seatbelt,” Lydia responds, unlocking her phone and passing it back. If they get pulled over they’re screwed anyway at the speed she’s going, but a seatbelt violation is just extra, and it makes her feel better.

“Derek,” she says. “They - of course you are. Lydia and I are on our way. Yeah.” She slides the phone into one of the cupholders between the front seats “The jogging path’s the most direct way.”

Lydia nods, and turns sharply into the parking lot. Cora’s out as soon as the car is slowed, door slamming closed under Lydia’s continued forward momentum. Lydia follows as fast as she can, sticking to the trail but following the tugging in her gut. Someone is far closer to death than she’s comfortable with.

She hears voices in a few short minutes, but no shouting or sounds of violence. It would worry her, but she hasn’t felt the snap that means that someone’s died. The tug is lessening, though, which might mean a slow death or a decline in tensions. She keeps her pace steady, and arrives on a -

Okay, first off, Derek is wearing glasses and holding a manila folder full of what looks like parchment. Stiles is sitting on the ground, unconcerned with the other goings-on and braiding a crown out of ivy and other non-native flora. Scott is looking all leadery, and Cora is standing there with her claws out and no one to attack. They’re facing off with what look like tiny winged accountants.

“- negotiations can start,” Derek is finishing up.

“Your terms are no fun, but they’re acceptable,” one of the pixies says. It snaps its tiny fingers, and Stiles stills suddenly.

It’s all very anticlimactic. Cora in particular looks disappointed that ‘kill them all’ is no longer on the table.

“If we leave now, we’ll be in time for third period,” Lydia says, and they all snap to look at her. “Derek, I assume you can handle it from here?” He’s the one who cares about negotiating, so he can handle it. They’ll be able to track them better, now, so if everything here falls through then Cora’s plan is still a go.

Stiles stands, starts to brush his hands off, does a double take, and then proceeds to brush his hands off with extreme prejudice and a seeming desire to wreck the pants, which Lydia approves of. “Give me a ride?”

Lydia just turns on her heel and walks away. They’ll follow.

-

By the end of the day, there was no more talk of a theatre production, which is almost a shame. Lydia wouldn’t have minded seeing her peers butcher Shakespeare. There’s another part of her that regrets the lack of prospective harmless mayhem to throw her and Cora together. Cora is - terrible. Completely terrible, but her company is a known quantity, at least. Enough of a known quantity that it’s not a surprise when Lydia goes upstairs after dinner and Cora’s curled up as a wolf on Lydia’s bed.

“You know,” Lydia says, sorting through clothes in her closet that don’t need sorting, “I’m perfectly happy to cuddle with you in your other shape, too.”

There’s a pause, and Lydia’s heart trips faster, because even though she’s very good at math she can still miscalculate. “Do you own any actually comfortable clothes?”

Lydia grins into her closet, and grabs yoga pants and a tank top from the shelf.


End file.
